The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

Perhaps even more incredible is that, at first, the White House denied there was a problem with the list, until someone apparently figured out what happened:

In this case, the pool report was filed by Washington Post White House bureau chief Scott Wilson. Wilson said he had copied the list from the e-mail provided by White House press officials. He sent his pool report to the press officials, who then distributed it to a list of more than 6,000 recipients.

Wilson said that after the report was distributed, he noticed the unusual reference to the station chief and asked White House press officials in Afghanistan whether they had intended to include that name.

Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer’s name. The mistake, however, already was being noted on Twitter, although without the station chief’s name.

Meanwhile, back in the US, the guy who blew the whistle on the CIA's waterboarding program is sitting in jail for "revealing" a CIA agent's name, when he actually did much, much less (simply confirming to a reporter the name of someone that reporter might want to talk to about a story). But, as double standards tend to go, I would imagine no one will be going to jail over this much more serious leak. After all, whoever fucked up and put it in the list probably hasn't blown the whistle on a program like the US torturing people.

Obviously, mistakes happen, but it's fairly incredible how the same people will brush off "mistakes" like this one, while going absolutely crazy over claims that John Kiriakou or Thomas Drake or Ed Snowden somehow caused a tremendous amount of "harm" despite no evidence to actually support those claims.

Re: Re: Brace for it

4 Americans died in Benghazi, mostly thru indifference, ineptitude, and inaction by those in power. I'm glad SOMEONE is still looking into what happened, asking questions of this most transparent Administration.

This is just another reason Snowden couldn't have gone through the 'proper' channels. Had he done so, and gotten the White House to actually notify the public about the NSA abuse, all of the agents' names in the documents would have been revealed through White House blunders and hundreds - or possibly thousands of lives would be in jeopardy.

Funny how the most powerful nation in the world needs to capture all communication around the globe, employ hundreds of cryptographers, hack software, force companies to give them access to systems and data, and undermine it's own principals to get information about it's enemies - but it's enemies just need to watch Twitter.

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A better way to phrase it.

Regardless of whether if be

4 more or less than 4000....

Does it matter if they died under questionable circumstances, regardless of numbers?

More people have died in car accidents per year than we have lost per year in any wars we have fought since Desert Storm. But I bet you will say that the 100 dying in a war are > then the 100,000 dead in auto accidents.

Re: Re: Brace for it

If president Obama "himself" declassifies an operative cover while they are in the field then no he cannot do it.

It would still technically be illegal as nothing other than "Treason".

But the real question, do you even thing the Democratic Party would even think of doing this to one of their own? Obama could lead a foreign Army across our border and they would just call everyone that disagreed with it/him a racist.

Has anybody released the spy's name to the public?

If not that proves that the press is still capable of judging for themselves what kind of classified data should be kept out of the news.

If someone did release the name than that is the fault of both the government and the news outlet that did do that. The government failed to be secretive with a valuable asset while encouraging negligence and corruption in the intelligence community. And the news outlet failed because they just put a name out there without thinking about consequences because they are either compliant drones or idiots that don't know the difference between relevant and irrelevant info.

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Not only that, the President and his administration concocted a lie as a cover up, told that to the American people and the international community (the UN). Then lied about the lie. But it seems his supporters don't care about people being killed or about being lied to.

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You can't explain how the US profited from the wars that Ovomit continued to wage. And you use your puerile argument to distract from the fact that you elected a war-mongering, prepubescent retard for President.

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You're a moron. GWB outed no one. Richard Armitage, a Libtard who weaseled his way into the Bush Administration, outed her. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to an FBI agent and obstruction of justice during the witch hunt that you Leftards sanctioned. Never, did anyone suspect GWB of outing Wilson's wife.

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The Plame affair (also known as the CIA leak scandal and Plamegate) was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003. [1][2][3]

In 2002, Plame recommended her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, to the CIA for a mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had arranged to purchase and import uranium from the country. Wilson initially bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts, but after President George W. Bush made the same claim during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson denied his initial pre-war assessment. [4]

In response, Wilson published a July 2003 op-ed in The New York Times detailing the negative results of his investigation. A week later, Novak published a column which mentioned claims from "two senior administration officials" that Plame had been the one to suggest sending her husband. Novak had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage. [2] Many [who?] alleged that Armitage and other officials had leaked the information as political retribution for Wilson's article.

The scandal led to a criminal investigation; although no one was charged for the leak itself, Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush

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I wouldn't say covering up what happened wasn't for profit... it kept an inept politician in the White House. There was only one reason to downplay what transpired in Benghazi... Saving the Presidents political ass.

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I wish that were true. Today I spoke to a man who said, "Our president is crap."

"Why do you hate him?" I asked.

"..."

That's your problem. When people think too simplistically to base their opinions on anything solid, something is wrong. Had he said, "Because he persecutes whistleblowers," I'd have agreed, but his unwillingness or inability to properly articulate his reasoning (if any) indicates unwillingness to think for himself.

It's why we get people advocating violence as the solution. Why? Because taking responsibility is hard.

Not enough of us are seeing thru the crap, my friend. We're too busy blaming Blue Team or Red team for it.